An Innovative Mobile Game for Screening of Pediatric PTSD: a Study in Primary Care Settings

Robust Parental Preferences in Mental Health Screening in Youth From a Multinational Online Survey

“…30 Although these studies often show relatively high acceptance rates (75-85%), certain topics had significantly lower acceptance rates (e.g., 50.4%) and percentages of acceptance appear to drastically differ according to the topic. 30 Attitudes towards a growing number of mental health topics are being assessed in the literature (e.g., suicidality, 25,30,34,35 substance use, 24,30 firearms, 26,30,36 depression, 22,25,30,37 attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, 22,37 anxiety, 22,37 and gender identity 29 ), though typically in isolation of one another 24,25,29,34,38 -precluding a comprehensive picture. 22,26,30,37 Additionally, these studies often focused on the attitudes of patients and medical staff rather than parents and caregivers; they rarely studied the impact of the report option for the topic in question (e.g., parent-report or a child selfreport questionnaire).…”

What role can (and should) clinical science play in promoting mental health care equity?

“…In my lab's own work, our scientific pursuits and conceptualization of persisting target problems have only been enriched by our partnerships with colleagues whose work sits squarely outside of clinical psychology. This includes collaborations with those in computer and computational science to generate innovative ways to screen for mental health issues in community settings (e.g., Asnaani et al, 2021), and many research grants with colleagues of different training backgrounds in fields of nursing, social work, and a number of medical specialties (including oncology, nephrology, physical rehabilitation; e.g., our current National Institutes of Health grant partnering with a technology firm and primary care colleagues; MPIs: Asnaani and Gooneratne). Often, our colleagues in these spaces, just like our valued community partners, bring rich, differing perspectives and creative solutions, methodologies, and interpretations to our findings.…”

“…For instance, in the direct-to-consumer domain, the clinical science field has observed the creation, testing, and roll-out of hundreds of digital mental health interventions, covering a range of symptom areas (Teachman et al, 2022), a number of which have been further tailored to better support specific segments of communities (Carter et al, 2021; Ellis et al, 2022). For instance, in some of my previous work in inner city Philadelphia, we partnered with colleagues in other institutions and disciplines (i.e., computer science) to create an interactive smart game version of a screener for posttraumatic stress disorder for children aged 8–12 years old presenting to primary care clinics for standard care (Asnaani et al, 2021). This study represented an important integration of technology innovation, cross-disciplinary collaborations, engagement in community settings, and developmentally responsive assessment for a vulnerable age group of young children who are otherwise reticent to disclose their trauma histories.…”

Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology: Anu Asnaani.

“…Indeed, it was at this time that Anu felt the most tension between the traditional model of clinical trial research/grant writing and “messier” applications of such work in community and naturalistic settings, with an external push for her work to encompass mostly the former rather than the latter. Nonetheless, she followed her inner compass and started engaging more in community-based and naturalistic research (e.g., Asnaani, Narine, et al, 2020; Asnaani, Tyler, et al, 2020).…”